The Man With No Name

Controlling Anger

This article on how genes impact mens’ ability to “control their anger” is another illustration of how sociology can corrupt science.

The basic control in this genetic research is men who “reported a history of confrontational and antagonistic behavior, such as fighting, having temper tantrums or breaking objects in fits of anger.”

Look at the societal judgment there in grouping all three of those practices together – that violence is the same as temper tantrums and breaking things in anger. By finding a gene that impacts such behavior, they are then applying this societal judgment onto the gene.

This is a big deal because it can lead to judgments of “proof” about our nature as humans – that anger is about genetic differences, that we now have a scientific opportunity to control against it, and perhaps even that we should. It’s philosophical laziness. Somewhere in the design of this study, someone who had an automatic bias against “anger” embedded these judgments into the study without even thinking about it – probably a scientist who was by nature uncomfortable with emotional displays and expressions.

Contrast this with the philosophy of rage expression being a healthy thing. The philosophy of the moral dividing point being whether you are bringing harm to oneself or to another by restricting their free will. At that point, expressions of rage that don’t result in violence (like “temper tantrums”, the very name of which underscores the judgments we have against such emotional expressions) become healthy things. Even breaking objects in “fits” (expressions) of anger can be a healthy outlet, if the objects are yours and you don’t regret it afterwards.

If you apply that philosophy of anger to this study, the study’s implications (as suggested by the article) start to look very flimsy. The truth is there is a very big difference between anger/rage, and violence. If non-violent surrenders to anger are actually a healthy thing, it turns the possible conclusions to this study on its head: what if the people who have “difficulty” restraining their anger are the healthier ones? What if the people who are “skilled” at controlling (or suppressing) their anger are the unhealthy ones? This is what is scary about gene therapy – the hidden societal judgments we make that a gene may be a “disease” when it may actually be a “cure”. (A year or so ago, I remember finding an article on a gene for “depression”, which just struck me as ridiculous since we don’t even have an iron-clad definition of what depression is. Another example of science being impacted by litterings of societal judgments.)

There’s a very basic societal struggle having to do with our desire to excise parts of ourself, rather than integrate them. What happens is that we end up with partially excised parts of our nature, the denial of which comes back on us as a vengeance sometimes (trying so hard not to be angry that we end up violent, for instance). The conclusion that is easy to draw is that we haven’t excised those parts of our nature enough. The proper conclusion, however, is that when those denied parts of our nature take control of us, it’s because we’ve tried to excise them too much.